The chief executive of HM Revenue and Customs, Lin Homer, is leaving the role after four years in which she faced fierce criticism over HMRC’s failure to answer millions of calls from the public and its handling of the HSBC tax scandal.
She will step down in April and HMRC has begun looking for a successor. She joined HMRC in January 2012 from the department of transport and has spent 36 years as a civil servant and in local government.
Homer said she was not looking for a new job immediately and would take a break over the summer. “After 10 years as a chief executive and permanent secretary in the civil service, the start of the next spending review period seemed to be a sensible time to move on. HMRC has secured ministerial support and funding for our ambitious transformation programme and it has the leadership team in place to deliver it,” she said.
The government said Homer had achieved a record increase in total revenues and reduced error and fraud in tax credits. Customer service had recovered from a low of less than half of calls answered in 2011 to almost 90% answered in December 2015.
Homer, who was made a dame in the New Year honours list, has been the subject of political controversy during her tenure. She revealed in February that most UK clients of HSBC’s Swiss business who settled with the tax authorities did so under an extraordinarily lenient agreement. Homer also apologised in November that HMRC’s giant call centre had failed to answer a quarter of the 50m calls it received each year.
The chancellor, George Osborne, said: “Lin Homer has made a real contribution to public service modernisation and transformation. She has put the foundations in place that will see HMRC become one of the most digitally advanced tax authorities in the world.”
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